


Good Night

by ShadowHaloedAngel



Series: Kisses [1]
Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: F/F, Fluff, Kissing, Softness
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-01
Updated: 2019-07-01
Packaged: 2020-06-02 10:40:16
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,898
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19439779
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ShadowHaloedAngel/pseuds/ShadowHaloedAngel
Summary: A kiss goodnight. Sometimes the important rituals are in the small things.





	Good Night

**Author's Note:**

> My main Camp Nano project this time around (aside from updating other fics when I can), is a list of fifty kiss prompts. I'm not aiming to get them all done this month but it's a nice way to get a start on them, and there's a good chance I'll do some prompts more than once with different pairings and different fandoms. The intention is to have a series of wlw/queer lady kisses across a mixture of fandoms and pairings. I hope you enjoy.

For all that she would never class herself as superstitious, Tasha understood the value of ritual. She also understood how dangerous it could be to take anything for granted. Although things were better now, the complete lack of control she had had during her childhood, during her training had left its mark. With SHIELD she was her own woman, for the most part, and since joining the Avengers that had only become more the case. She was still reluctant to get... attached. It never paid to hand anybody a way to hurt you, after all. 

Meeting Clint had changed that in some ways, because Clint was annoying and persistent, and annoyingly persistent, and he had worn her down through sheer bloody mindedness if nothing else. He was a constant, and she knew really that when it came down to it, she could rely on Clint. He was hers, and she was his. It wasn't physical, no... or rather, sometimes it was physical, but even then it wasn't sexual. There was nothing romantic about it. Clint spent far too much time mooning after Coulson for that, and Coulson was one of the few professionals Natasha really respected. He was unassuming, certainly, but that didn't mean anything. There were few operatives in the world who might really be able to rival him. 

The other meeting that had changed things for her had been in the course of work, like so many others.

She had been undercover to investigate Tony Stark, or, as he apparently preferred to be known these days, Iron Man. The order had come direct from Fury, and actually Natasha had a grudging respect for him these days too. He knew how to play the game. 

She'd been expecting Stark, she'd been expecting the playboy, the bits that were easy to manipulate... and she'd been pleasantly surprised by the way he didn't quite conform. The genius label evidently hadn't been lightly used, and for a man functioning on a different intellectual level he actually had a surprisingly acute social awareness. 

She hadn't been expecting Pepper Potts. There had been a dossier, certainly, an acknowledgement that she was the real power in the company - if Stark was the ideas, she was the logistics. It would never function without both of them. Natasha had some idea what it would take to be a woman in that position, to have come up the way she came up, to do the things she was doing, but Pepper had taken her by surprise and knocked the breath from her lungs without even trying. 

They were very different women, they played very different games, and yet they weren't that different at all, beneath the surface. 

She'd told herself it had been part of the mission originally, since Stark had seemed unreceptive to her advances. Seducing Potts was the next best source of intel on the company, and Natasha had never had a problem playing both sides of the sheets. Really, she preferred women, but rarely had a chance to indulge it. It ha certainly never been part of any official briefing, and Coulson never encouraged that kind of intelligence gathering, but it had been easier to tell herself it was for the mission than to admit to personal curiousity. 

She certainly hadn't expected it to linger.

There was a strange comfort they could draw from each other, a strength that came from a tacit understanding, passing between them without words, and that had led to their own rituals in a way. They moved in different worlds, and the battles Pepper fought were bloodless but could be no less ugly, because men were so rarely willing to give any ground to a woman, let alone one they could dismiss like Pepper. It was easy to come up with a myriad ways she might have become CEO without actually acknowledging talent. And besides, regardless of how she'd reached the post, it was becoming harder and harder to deny that she had a very real skill for it. 

Tasha, on the other hand, moved in the shadows, flashes of steel and hot crimson, solving problems the world didn't realise it had. One downside to the Avengers was the way it risked exposing her, but she had known the risks when she joined the team and deemed them to be worth taking. She was secure enough now in being Natasha Romanov, no longer A Black Widow, but The Black Widow, and her own person, not Natalia Alianovna Romanova, beholden to someone else. 

Their schedules kept them apart more often than not, on missions and business trips, but there were some rituals that held them together even through that, and lent strength in the darkest times. 

The mornings were often messy. SHIELD hours could be unpredictable, espceially for high level specialists, and Stark Industries business trips could be capricious. Both of them were deprived of sleep often enough that it was important to take what they could get, so good morning kisses were rare and not something that could be counted on with the number of times one or the other of them would wake up to already cool sheets. 

Good night kisses, on the other hand, were something constant. They were a seal, a promise, an end to the day. Things felt... incomplete somehow, without one. There were times when Tasha would be off the grid when she couldn't share one, but even then she would take a moment to blow a kiss to the stars, trusting that Pepper would know it somehow. Whenever they could, no matter what else might be going on, they would take the time for a quick text message, or an email, or even a very brief phone call. It only needed to be two words, after all. 

"Good night x"

It was a way of saying that neither of them had been forgotten, that they were seen, that they were loved, because there were so many in the world who neither saw, nor understood, nor cared to. The comfort they drew from each other was largely having finally met somebody else who could understand what it meant to move through the world in the way they did. 

The mission had been a long one, disappearing into the mountains of Central Asia, and Tasha was bone-tired and fed up. At least this time she'd had her team with her. She was better at working with others than Clint was, he could be famously inflexible at times, but when she was forced away from Clint and Coulson she became... professional, and nothing but. It wasn't the worst solution, as defence mechanisms went, but she worked better with people she could trust. 

Rather than heading back to the SHIELD barracks, she took a car to Stark Tower. She kept rooms at the barracks as well as the tower, but this wasn't about giving work any more hours of her life. This was about something personal, something they couldn't have. She was fairly sure, through a memory hazy with exhaustion, that Pepper had said something about a business trip. Even if the apartment was empty, she still preferred the idea of being in Pepper's space than her own. It would be less empty, more... familiar.

It was approaching 2 A.M. as she walked in, instinctively silent about it. Honestly sometimes it was harder to make noise. She appreciated the way Jarvis kept the lights low. She was already halfway to the bedroom, moving soundlessly across the floor, ready to kick off her boots and fall into crisp sheets that smelled like Pepper when she noticed the kitchen light on and changed direction, a hand moving towards one of her many concealed weapons. Jarvis hadn't said anything, but that didn't preclude an attack. Not even he was entirely foolproof, and Pepper was quite the target for many reasons. 

Brightly illuminuated by the harsh overhead lights, Pepper Potts stood in the little kitchenette, strawberry hair cascading down her back in a messy ponytail over a powder blue tank top with spaghetti straps over loose jersey shorts which only seemed to emphasise the length of her long legs. Tasha's gaze travelled slowly up them, from ankle to hip, and then higher. She appreciated this chance to admire her lover in an unguarded moment. Pepper with her guard down, in casual clothes, not dressed up to perform for the media, for the rest of the world, without her mask... there were too few opportunities to admire her like this, and Tasha treasured every one of them. Besides, she had some quite fond memories of kissing her way up every inch of that creamy skin on more than one occasion. 

Pepper's arms were braced on the worktop, shoulders taut, exhaustion in every line of her body, and Tasha stepped forward hesitantly, coming up to the side of her and resting a hand lightly on the patch of exposed skin at the small of her back. She was expecting the knife, and parried it, disarming her swiftly, but she was smiling. 

"...I'm impressed."

"You should be. You trained me."

Pepper's voice was low, almost rough in her chest, and Tasha could see the mug she'd been hunched over, fragrant curls of steam from golden liquid suggesting an old favourite remedy. She dipped her finger in and licked it clean with a wicked smirk, testing. 

"...Whisky and lemon? Heavy on the whisky tonight. That bad?"

"Well I didn't think I'd have you here to help me sleep."

"What a coincidence. I didn't think I'd have you here either."

"How was it?"

Tasha grimaced and shook her head, just the once, cupping Pepper's jaw and sliding her hand back to rest on the back of her lover's neck. Pepper dropped her head, leaning into the touch almost. Tasha was still surprised at how easily Pepper responded to possessiveness from her, the trust she was willing to show. That trust was a gift Tasha would never be able to take for granted. 

"...It can wait till morning, love."

"...That bad?" Pepper sighed, braced again now, and stared down at her mug contemplatively before she looked back up to meet Tasha's eyes, "...You want one?"

Tasha smiled, a small twitch of her lips but real all the same, and shook her head. 

"...No. I might make a cup of sleepy time tea though."

"What a wonderful idea..."

Pepper yawned, and Tasha smiled, pressing her tongue to the roof of her mouth to conquer the urge to copy her. It was a difficult reflex to overcome. 

"Kettle's still warm?"

"Thank you."

Tasha moved away long enough to get her favourite mug (though she still wasn't really willing to admit that she had a favourite mug), and fetch a tea bag from one of the jars they kept lined up on the sofa, setting her tea brewing before she leaned back on the counter next to Pepper, watching her. 

"...Shall we go to bed?"

"...Yup. I'm just... trying to summon up the energy to move..."

Tasha smiled and leaned in, giving her a quick peck on the lips with a soft, soft smile. 

"Well, goodnight then love, I'll be waiting for you..."

And as she made her way towards the bedroom at long last, practically asleep on her feet, she heard Pepper following behind, the circuit finally complete to allow them both to get some much-needed rest.


End file.
